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Contents

Abstract

Introduction

This is Will Rynearson’s master’s thesis, defended in May 2021 to Tsinghua University in Beijing. This thesis examines how water quality relates to perception and to knowledge of water quality in China.

It was converted into this webpage in an attempt to share the thesis and to learn more about JupyterBook. It was last edited on 1 March 2022.

Poor water quality and its grave implications for health, economic and political security are especially acute in China. This thesis adds the human experience component by examining how water quality, water quality knowledge and water quality perception are related. Demographic and questionnaire responses from the China General Social Survey ($n=11783$) were aligned with water quality scores ($n=363$) from the Blue City Water Quality Index Report. The data shows that there is broad concern for environmental issues individually and nationally, and that water quality concerns rank highly on individuals’ list of environmental issues. The analysis indicates that perceived severity of poor water quality increases as water quality worsens. Water quality knowledge also improves with increased education and with worse water quality. The results suggest that China should complement infrastructure-based water resource management solutions with diverse, local, and inclusive policy and education in order to meet its ambitious water resource management targets.

Keywords

• Water quality

• Water pollution

• Environmental knowledge

• Environmental perception

To-do

• Import code (not just charts), including original thesis Annex

• Export statistical information (P value, etc.) as code / table (not just text)

• Define content (e.g. hypothesis text) to cross reference later

• Add comments in the margin

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Introduction